Films A to Z

Evidentiary Bodies

Runtime:

10.0 min.

Year of Production:

2018

Country:

USA

Director:

Barbara Hammer

Production Company:

Berlinale Section:

Forum

Berlinale Category:

Short Film

A life lived within the sprocket holes of film can still dance. The beauty of the human body, although maimed, dances forward. Hope does not live eternal but daily. An audience immersed in three screens to feel the encasement of illness, the isolation of the material
body. The forever ongoing chain of film runs but cannot hold up the protagonist. Time is flexible as the body transforms and the film loops. A trilogy of the self, witness of decline and suffering, performing the unthinkable, inevitable, dance of death. Three surrounds,
enfolds, embraces the one who cannot stand alone. We, as human beings on a small globe, united by evolutionary structure and biological DNA have a chance to come together through the experience of empathy and identification with the sensitive body. An
unspoken plea for viewers to engage with compassion, to experience vulnerability, to know through evidence this body is their body.

BIOGRAFIE Barbara Hammer

Barbara Hammer was born on May 15, 1939 in Hollywood, Cali- fornia. She is a visual artist working primarily in lm and video and has made over 80 works in a career that spans 30 years. She is considered a pioneer of queer cinema. Her experimental lms of the 1970s often dealt with taboo subjects such as menstruation, female orgasm and lesbian sexuality. In the ’80s she used optical printing to explore perception and the fragility of 16mm lm life itself. Optic Nerve (1985) and Endangered (1988) were selected for the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennials (’85, ’89), Nitrate Kisses (1992) for the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Her documentaries tell the stories of marginalized peoples who have been hidden from history and are often essay lms that are multi-leveled and engage audiences viscerally and intellectually with the goal of activating them to make social change. She lives and works in New York City. Contact: barbarahammer@gmail.com

FILMOGRAFIE Barbara Hammer (selection)

2018Evidentiary Bodies2010Maya Deren's Sink2010Generations2008A Horse Is Not A Metaphor2006Fucking Different New York2006Lover Other: The Story Of Claude Cahun And Marcel Moore1993Sanctus1992Nitrate Kisses1991Vital Signs1989Sill Point1979Bent Time1979Available Space